---
The sky split open an hour after dawn. Rain fell in sheets, turning the forest into a drumbeat of chaos. Lila stumbled, her boots sinking into mud as lightning seared the horizon. Ash clung to her shoulders, his claws pricking through her coat, his growls harmonizing with the thunder.
"We need shelter!" Lila shouted, but the wind stole her words.
They found it in a derelict ranger's tower, its stairs creaking under their weight. Inside, mold festered on maps pinned to the walls, and the skeleton of a long-dead hiker sat slumped in the corner. Lila dropped her pack, trembling as she lit a match. Ash paced, his fur sparking with static.
"Members of the Resistance will track us here," Lila muttered, rifling through the journal. "We need to cross the river before—"
A gunshot cracked. The window shattered.
---
"Hello, little liar."
Jessa stood in the doorway, her bow drawn, rainwater slicing off her shorn hair. Behind her, two rebels leveled rifles—*survivors of the firestorm*. Ash hissed, fangs bared, but Lila raised her hands.
"You're supposed to be dead," Lila said.
"You're supposed to be obedient." Jessa's smile was a knife. "Raven's gone. But the resistance isn't. And we want that cure."
Ash leapt, but a net snared him midair, its wires biting into his flesh. Lila screamed, lunging, but a rifle butt slammed into her temple.
Darkness.
---
Lila woke to the taste of blood and the rumble of engines.
A resistance truck sped down a flooded highway, its bed lined with cages. Ash was gone. Her backpack, too. Only the journal remained, tucked into her waistband—*they missed it*.
A resistance member with a serpent tattoo sneered. "Sleeping beauty's up."
"Where's my cat?" Lila rasped.
"Rat's probably roadkill by now."
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
She lunged, rattling the cage. "I'll kill you!"
The man laughed. "You're worth more alive, Voss. Once we reach the new camp, you'll brew us enough cure to trade for an army."
*New camp*. The resistance had regrouped. Stronger.
---
Ash writhed in the net, the storm drowning his yowls. The humans had tossed him into the mud, a "gift for the rot-walkers."
But Ash was no gift.
He gnawed the wires, blood slicking his jaws, until the net frayed. Freedom tasted of rain and rage. He tracked the truck's tire marks, but the floodwaters rose, washing the road away.
*Lila. Lila. Lila.*
Her scent faded. His fault.
A growl rumbled behind him. A rot-walker bear, its fur sloughing off, ribs open. Ash ran.
---
The new resistance fortress was a prison turned stronghold, its walls crowned with rot-walker skulls. Lila was dragged into a cell, where Jessa awaited, holding a syringe of 9A's blood.
"You'll teach us to make more," Jessa said. "Or we'll dissect you and reverse-engineer it."
Lila spat blood. "You need me alive."
"Alive, yes. Whole?" Jessa shrugged. "Debatable."
Night fell. Lila traced her father's journal entries, her mind snagging on a phrase: *"Live cells require proximity. Symbiosis, not slaughter."*
*Symbiosis*.
She hid the journal under loose bricks, her plan coiling tight.
---
At dawn, Lila bargained.
"I'll make your cure," she told Jessa. "But I need equipment. And a test subject."
Jessa smirked. "We've got plenty of *subjects*."
They brought her a rot-walker—a teen girl, her wrists raw from shackles. Lila injected her with 9A's blood, hands steady.
"Will it hurt?" the girl whispered.
"Yes," Lila said. "But not forever."
The girl's screams brought resistance members running. Lila used the chaos to pocket a scalpel.
---
Ash wandered into a kingdom of strays.
A colony of feral cats ruled a junkyard, their leader a one-eyed tom named **Grim**. They'd domesticated rot-walkers, luring them into pits as hunting sport.
"Join us," Grim rasped. "Humans are weak. Prey."
Ash's ears flattened. *Lila isn't prey.*
But he stayed, learning their ways—how to steer rot-walkers with light. Nights, he stared at the moon, wondering if Lila saw it too.
---
A resistance patrol passed the junkyard, their truck splattered with mud. Ash caught Lila's scent—*fear, salt, steel*.
He followed, stealthy as shadow, to a cliffside cave. Inside, stockpiled weapons and a radio chattered: *"—shipment en route to the prison. Voss is compliant—"*
Ash memorized the coordinates scratched on a crate. *N33° 44.577 W117° 52.341*.
Then he fled, Grim's warnings echoing: *"Trust no human. Not even yours."*
---
Days blurred. Lila sabotaged batches, slipped poisons into rebel rations, and whispered to test subjects: *"The east gate. At moonrise."*
A boy with half-cured eyes nodded. *"We'll be ready."*
But Jessa watched, always watching.
"You're lying," Jessa said, pressing a knife to Lila's throat. "The cure's unstable."
Lila smiled. "Took you long enough."
---
Ash stood at the cliff's edge, the prison looming below.
*Save Lila.*
*Or warn the feral court about the resistance arms.*
He yowled into the void, torn.
Then he turned toward the prison.
*Always Lila.*
---
End of chapter 7
---